School's Out
by JuniperGentle
Summary: What happens when BEGA's finest confront the terrors of biology and physics? Absolute chaos, of course, courtesy of a very bored Brooklyn. Extension of the drabble "Nil Desperandum" from Juniper Berries.
1. School's Out

_Inspired by the drabble I wrote in **Juniper Berries** called "Nil Desperandum". Having wandered around a BEGA classroom for 100 words, I wanted to stay there a bit longer to find out what happens after the maths lesson ends... this was meant to be a one-shot, but it wanted to be longer so I ran with it._

**School's Out**

Tick... tock... tick... tock...

Could time possibly be slowing down?

No. That was impossible. Einstein's theory of general relativity said that time could only ever slow down at the bottom of a deep gravity well, and Brooklyn was fairly certain that the gravity of the classroom was still the same. Just to check, however, he flicked at a stray pencil lead on his desk. Like he thought, it went flying, hitting Ming-Ming on the back of the head.

The turquoise-haired pop star jumped and put a hand to her head, looking around in all directions. Unfortunately for her, this caught the attention of Hiro.

"Ah, Ming-Ming, thank you for volunteering."

"What!" Her head shot round to the front.

"Ming-Ming, what is the process by which hydrogen peroxide is broken down into water and oxygen?"

She stared blankly at the blue-haired coach of the former BEGA team. Now doubling as their private tutor, Hiro had proved to be just as harsh as task-master over biology and maths as he had been over blading practice. "Umm... photosynthesis?"

Brooklyn winced as Hiro's eyes widened. "Ming-Ming, did I or did I not set that precise question as your homework two nights ago?"

"Yes, Coach Hiro."

"So _why_ did you not know the answer?"

"iforgotcoachhiro."

"Pardon?"

"I didn't do it, alright?"

Strange, thought Brooklyn. He'd already heard that fateful phrase twice this morning, and it wasn't even eleven o'clock yet. Mystel had met his eyes earlier that morning, winked as he slid a mysteriously empty tin of drawing pins into his desk drawer and whispered, "I didn't do it, alright?" And Garland, temper frayed by repeated acts of God, or more accurately Acts of Mystel, had yelled this same phrase at the red-head when politely asked why the orange juice in the team fridge had been replaced with apple juice, which Brooklyn had a decided dislike for. Brooklyn didn't really understand this, as it wasn't his fault either, but was _he_ yelling? No. Most unfair.

Back in the present, Hiro sighed and gave Ming-Ming a long-suffering look. "Ming-Ming, that is the third piece of homework in a row that you haven't done. I'm sorry, but that means a detention."

"Yes, Coach Hiro." Ming-Ming sounded miserable. Detentions with Coach Hiro were renowned for their severity.

Hiro turned back to the board and drew another circle on his already complicated diagram. Over his shoulder, he said casually "You will be tested on this topic this afternoon, so I suggest you start copying it."

Brooklyn looked down at his blank Biology notebook. Coach Hiro had been tutoring them for nearly a month now, and Brooklyn had yet to write a single note. It wasn't that Brooklyn was overconfident; he just never needed to learn. Information just filed itself away in his head, then conveniently presented itself in an orderly fashion whenever asked. He knew there had been several times when he'd actually answered an exam in his sleep, as he got the marks but couldn't remember any of the questions. Well, unless it was Maths... but that was another story.

Zeus suddenly tugged at Brooklyn's mind, and the red-head automatically ducked. A rubber flew over his head and smacked into the back of Ming-Ming's head.

"Hey!" exclaimed the small pop-star, hand flying once again to her head. She turned and glared at Brooklyn. "What was that for?"

Zeus growled at Venus, who raised her hackles and snarled in response. But before the god-beasts could clash properly, the familiar voice of Coach Hiro broke over the top of them.

"What's going on here?"

"Brooklyn _hit_ me!" Ming-Ming wailed. "That's the second time today!"

"I did not hit you!" Brooklyn retorted. "That's not even my rubber!"

"Brooklyn," Hiro warned. "You've already upset the class once today. Don't think I didn't notice that trick with the pencil earlier. I want you to stay behind this afternoon."

Brooklyn gaped at him. The sheer injustice of it! _He_ was getting detention because someone else – and he knew _exactly_ who – had thrown a rubber at the girl in front of him!

Hiro picked up the offending item with a confused look. "This is Crusher's," he said slowly. "But Crusher sits in front of you."

He turned to look at the last members of the class. Both had their heads down, apparently diligently copying from the board. Garland might actually have been doing work. Unfortunately, even the best dissembling on Mystel's part couldn't hide the fact the he was drawing a very silly picture of Ming-Ming's hair on fire rather than the complicated biological cycle they were supposed to be copying.

Zeus made a suggestion. Brooklyn agreed wholeheartedly with it, and watched with delight as Mystel's pencil and paper slowly floated away from his desk and drifted across the room to land in front of Hiro and Ming-Ming, who blinked in confusion. Seconds later, a familiar sling-shot shaped launcher landed on top of the picture.

Ming-Ming looked at the launcher, and Brooklyn was pleased to note that it took her less than five seconds to work out what had happened.

After that, there was no peace in the classroom. Suffice to say, Mystel ended up in detention for improper use of a beyblade launcher – as did Brooklyn for using his Bit-beast's powers outside of the bey-dish and being a tell-tale.


	2. Break

_I know, I know, it's been well over a year – nearly two! - since I updated this. My only excuse is that originally I wasn't really planning to continue it after the first slightly crack-filled chapter, but I had another idea! So here we go – School's Out Part 2._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 2 – Break<strong>

_In which Physics causes many problems, and Brooklyn sulks_

Garland rubbed at his head. It was break time, supposedly, but as it was pouring with rain outside nobody really wanted to brave the dash across the compound to the dinner hall.

When the BEGA headquarters had been rebuilt as a super-advanced training facility, the BBA had belatedly remembered that most of the original BEGA team didn't really have anywhere else to go. Well, Garland had his home, of course, and Ming-Ming's bank account might just about stand up to the cost of a house, but Crusher couldn't go anywhere until his sister was fully better and out of hospital, and Mystel and Brooklyn had just floated in like leaves on the wind and attached themselves to the team. So dorms had been built on the south end of the building, suitable not only for the BEGA team, but also for any bladers visiting from overseas. They consisted of three floors of rooms, with a kitchen and dining hall on the bottom floor as well. The classroom had been built after that, a temporary thing supposedly, but it was still there, a cold chipboard hut on the west side of the campus, about five minutes from anywhere vaguely sheltered; a cold chipboard hut that currently housed a bored, irritable Brooklyn who definitely did _not_ want to be inside, a stir-crazy Mystel who had clearly managed to smuggle his launcher back again, and Ming-Ming, who was just being Ming-Ming. And Garland, of course.

But not Hiro, who had an umbrella and refused to share it with the bearer of Appollon. He was safely in the canteen, getting first choice – actually, _only_ choice – of the various cakes that would be on offer, whilst his students shivered in their cold hut and did their homework in the vague hope that it would keep them out of the firing range of Brooklyn.

For no-one from the BEGA team seemed to be having a good day. Tempers were frayed and tensions running high, which wasn't at all helpful when you considered that the five students in the room didn't even have to move from their seats to cause total chaos. Ming-Ming was up against the monster that was her Physics coursework, and irritated sighs could be regularly heard from her seat. Normally, Brooklyn would give her a hand, but he was sulking. Which, of course, meant random clouds of purple-black static appearing around the room. Mystel's hair was already twice its usual size, and two of Garland's favourite pens had inexplicably disappeared. Occasionally, the lamp would shake a bit when one of Zeus's sub-sonic growls rolled out, and Garland knew Apollon had his paws over his ears. Considering that the reason Brooklyn was in such a bad mood was because he had a detention for doing exactly what he was doing now (again), Garland did briefly wonder about the effectiveness of the punishment, but a spike in the levels of static sent a stab of pain through his already aching head, and he forgot.

Crusher was trying very hard to concentrate on his drawing of the structure of an atom, but with everything else going on in the room, this was becoming more and more difficult by the second. For one thing, the integrity of an atom tended to _change_ when in contact with either Brooklyn or Zeus, so even if Crusher managed to copy it perfectly there was a chance that it would actually be wrong. In fact, there had been one occasion when Brooklyn had persuaded Zeus to enlarge a single molecule of water large enough to see the atoms in it, and Hiro had nearly collapsed. Apparently he had some knowledge of theoretical quantum physics, and Brooklyn's behaviour had just threatened the structure of the known universe. Not that Brooklyn cared – he had his own private universe in his head that he was quite happy to pull apart to see how it worked. If he didn't like what he found, he changed it. He didn't really understand why the outside universe should be any different.

Ming-Ming suddenly snarled and threw her pen across the room in a fit of temper, and Zeus instantly snapped it up, claws shredding the biro to pieces before they vanished into nothingness.

"What's wrong?" Garland asked, deciding that someone had to take control before there was an explosion.

"It doesn't make _sense!_" Ming-Ming cried. "I've gone over it three times and it still claims that if the blades are that shape they'd only spin for about thirty seconds! But we all saw them in the dish and they _don't!_"

Garland leaned over. They had been permitted to choose their own topics for their coursework, and Ming-Ming had taken it upon herself to discover why the Hard Metal System had been so much stronger than the old system of beyblades, or rather, how so much power had been packed into such a small frame. Garland had been very impressed – it was a difficult topic and so far Ming-Ming had been handling it very well. Now, though...

"And then I tried multiplying by the rotation speed but that just said that they'd fly." Ming-Ming was now sulking as well. "I hate this coursework. I don't want to do it any more."

"Well, you have to," Garland sighed. "Coach Hiro said the deadline for changing your mind was last Wednesday."

"It's still not fair," Ming-Ming muttered. "You got to do a really cool one, and so did Mystel."

Garland couldn't answer that. He had picked his coursework very carefully, studying bit-beasts and the sort of energy they were made from, and how this translated into both battles and the amount of energy in a blade. Mystel, on the other hand, had decided to calculate the exact increase in power that his jumping launch gave him, and whether there was any way to improve it still further. Coach Hiro had rolled his eyes when his students turned in their proposed questions, which all related to blading in some way or another. "You're all obsessed," he had sighed, before letting them get on with it.

Talking of Coach Hiro, here he came through the rain, umbrella still sheltering him as he reached the hut. "Break-time's over – put your books away, please. Garland, back to your seat. Now, let's – Mystel, _how_ did you get that back again? Bring your launcher up here, right now. Brooklyn, behave yourself. You know the rules of the classroom – no bit-beasts allowed during school hours. I've already put you in one detention..."

Garland exchanged a long-suffering look with Crusher, who was storing his rather wobbly diagram of an atom in his desk. This was what life was like in BEGA school.

"Mr Dickenson has just spoken to me, and he would like to know how you're all getting on, especially in Maths," Hiro continued. "So I've decided to give you a test this afternoon on all of the stuff we've been doing over the past week. It's not very much to cover, and so I expect very good results from all of you. To that end, anyone who gets less than... oh, sixty percent, will have to stay behind after lessons end and study the areas they answered incorrectly until they can answer the questions without help."

Brooklyn paled. He _hated_ Maths, even if Mystel had been so helpful yesterday in explaining how those little numbers and letters worked. Tests were his worst nightmare anyway (not counting certain bladers with scarves or hats... maybe he should get some gloves? Would that improve things? His old winter coat was getting a bit threadbare, so later on it would be really cold if he wasn't allowed to use Zeus to warm up, so perhaps he should get a new one? But that would mean going shopping, and Ming-Ming was the shopping queen of BEGA so she'd insist on coming and getting something completely unsuitable because Brooklyn's hair really did _not_ suit purple, no matter what she said. Green he could just about handle, and sometimes blue, but only on every other Thursday and only if it was a darker blue than the sky and if the sky was grey it didn't count, but white was his favourite even if Hiro and Ming-Ming and Garland and Garland's family who had him over for dinner three nights ago – Garland's sister was really nice and taught him how to play tennis in the back garden, even though Zeus kept on chasing the balls all over the place - all said it was the hardest colour to keep clean. Brooklyn had never had a problem. He never really had a problem with very much at all, unless it was Maths, and that was cheating anyway.)

Brooklyn suddenly realised that he had missed most of what Coach Hiro had just been saying. Irritated, he set off to look for where his mind had wandered away to without him, ignoring the muffled giggles of Venus. Zeus would deal with her as soon as they all got back.

When he finally started paying attention again, he discovered that they were not going to be given extra time to revise (or in Brooklyn's case, extra time to persuade Zeus to steal the answer sheet because detentions with Coach Hiro came very high up his list of things he did not want to do). Instead, they were turning to Geography, which was Coach Hiro's favourite subject. He knew a lot about Geography, having travelled all over the globe with his father to assist with archaeological digs, so Brooklyn had hoped at the beginning of the year that they would get to spend the lessons talking about the newest research on bit-beasts, because he always liked to find out what new theory the humans had come up with that Zeus violently disagreed with – but no. Instead it was learning the population density of every city in the country, and how this affected imports and exports.

The worst bit, of course, was that no matter how bored he was, Brookyln couldn't even try to go to sleep. With only six people in the classroom, it was fairly obvious if one of them was slacking off.

"If you'd all open your textbooks to page fifty-seven..."

.

Lunch-time passed far too quickly for everyone in the classroom. It still hadn't stopped raining, so once more all five members of the BEGA team were stuck in the room together. Brooklyn was holed up in the corner with Zeus and a book, thankfully not causing as much chaos as he had been at break. Garland was revising and eating at the same time. Mystel tried to do handsprings off of the desks, only to run out of desks rather quickly and resort to turning cartwheels down the length of the classroom. Brooklyn threw the board-rubber at him without looking when he came a shade too close. Crusher had disappeared for quarter of an hour or so and then returned with apple cake that Brooklyn immediately charmed him into sharing with him before settling back into his corner with a grumpy-looking Zeus, who was just a bit too big for the classroom and liked apple cake as much as his master. Ming-Ming was trying to get hold of her agent to ask him why the release date for her newest album had been pushed back yet again, despite the fact that it had been recorded and finished for a good three months already. All in all, it was a very noisy classroom. Garland was beginning to consider the benefits of a private tutor when Hiro slammed open the door wearing the face that meant he had run into either Tyson or Kai in the past hour.

"Brooklyn, back to your desk," he snapped. "Ming-Ming, off the phone."

"But-"

"No buts. I don't care if you're on the verge of signing the biggest deal in the history of pop, you have a test to do and it's school hours."

Ming-Ming pouted but said a hurried good-bye to her agent before hanging up. By the time she and Brooklyn were seated at their desks, the test papers had materialised.

"You've got an hour," Hiro told them. "No talking, no looking over at other people's work, no – Brooklyn, just _no._ No drawings of people with their hair on fire. No talking to your bit-beasts, no using your bit-beasts to find out the answers from other people. Is that understood?"  
>"Yes, Coach Hiro," they all chorused.<p>

"Off you go then."

And, for the first time in a very long time, the classroom descended into complete silence. Hiro sighed happily, knowing that it wouldn't last and determined to enjoy it whilst he could.

.

"Alright, that's time."

Five sets of eyes locked onto Hiro with varying degrees of boredom, relief and fear. Garland actually looked slightly worried, but then, he always put a lot of store by test results. Crusher and Ming-Ming seemed to have had huge weights taken off their shoulders as their faces lit up. Mystel was almost bouncing in his seat, having finished a good fifteen minutes ago. Brooklyn had finished long before that and was carelessly leaning back in his chair, only two – no, only _one_ chair-leg on the floor. That was probably Zeus' doing, but as Hiro couldn't actually _see_ the dark bit-beast's form around anywhere and Brooklyn had been known to balance on a single chair-leg before by sheer force of will, he couldn't tell him off for it.

Hiro looked around at his pupils, all restless after a full day inside. The rain had let up for a few minutes, so he gave in. After all, they were still teenagers, albeit rather exceptional ones.

"Alright, go on," he said. "Out you go whilst I mark these."

He had barely finished the last word when the classroom was empty.

* * *

><p><em>There will be one more short chapter just to finish this off, then this will (finally) be finished.<em>


	3. Detentions

**Chapter 3 – Detentions**

_In which Hiro decides that it should be someone else's problem, and Garland fails a test._

Hiro looked around. "Why hasn't anyone left?" he asked. He had been looking forward to getting away from his five pupils all day. Break and lunch didn't count – break had been taken up with meeting Mr Dickenson, and Kai had turned up on the doorstep of the BEGA headquarters at lunch looking for Garland for a practice battle. Why the kid wasn't in school himself Hiro did not know.

"You put us all in detention, Coach," Brooklyn sighed. Hiro tried very hard not to turn the same colour as the paper on his desk. Zeus's owner already looked decidedly bored, which was never a good thing. When Brooklyn was bored, Zeus tended to try and entertain him. The last time had included everything in the room except the chairs suddenly floating two feet off the ground, which had not been the most helpful of interventions. Admittedly, it was very funny afterwards, but at the time Hiro had been trying to explain that nothing could escape gravity. He had been forced to amend it to "nothing could escape gravity except things that Zeus decides to play with" which made his class laugh at him for days afterwards. He certainly didn't want a demonstration of how Kepler's First Law of Planetary Motion _also_ didn't apply when Zeus decided that triangles were_ so_ much more interesting than ovals.*

"Even Garland?" Hiro asked, turning to the silver-haired blader, who shrugged.

"You said anyone with less than sixty percent on the test had to stay behind."

This was most perplexing. "But you're my best pupil - how did you get less than sixty percent? Even Brooklyn got eighty-four, for goodness sake!" Hiro thought back to the test. Yes, now he remembered. He had thought that Garland had just missed a couple of pages, but perhaps not.

Garland sighed. "I was answering the third question when Zeus ate my last pencil. I was going to ask to borrow one when I realised that he'd just eat those ones too."

"Brooklyn..." Hiro said, his voice a severe warning. The red-head shrugged nonchalantly.

"He didn't mean to, Coach," he protested lazily. "They just taste good. And you wouldn't let him out at lunch so he was hungry."

Hiro could feel a headache coming on. It seemed that no matter how many times he explained to Brooklyn that his beloved bit-beast was physically incapable of being hungry, as he was entirely made of energy, the redhead refused to believe him. His reasoning? _"He's my bit-beast, I should know."_

"And you, Crusher? I'm pretty certain I didn't put you in detention."

"You didn't, Coach Hiro," the young man answered. "I put myself in here."

Hiro stared at him in horror. _"What?"_ he spluttered. "You put _yourself_ in detention? Why?"

In answer, Crusher pointed to the list of classroom rules pinned up on the door. "I used Gigars to get me across the grounds without getting wet when it was raining. I promised Monica that I'd phone her at lunch, and I know I could have just run it, but it was raining so much..."

Hiro's heart sank. Whilst bit-beasts were noble creatures, special and sacred, they were also just as human as their owners, and loved them fiercely if properly looked after. For Gigars to allow his master to get soaked when trying to contact the person he cared most about was just unthinkable. And it was a perfectly good reason – if Gigars had been willing, then it was even a noble reason.

But he had to set an example, or else a pair of rather more troublesome beasts know as Brooklyn and Mystel would begin utilising their own bit-beasts' powers with more and more abandon, which was _never_ a good idea.

"Very well," he said at last. "The rules must be obeyed. Crusher, you'll have to stay behind too."

And so Hiro suddenly found himself with a class full of teenagers who not only did he want out of his sight, they weren't very happy at being there either.

Come to think of it, this was entirely normal.

"Fine," he sighed. "You can all just do your homework or something."

But it was not to be. Brooklyn smirked suddenly, and Hiro glanced rapidly around, just as Zeus managed to prove Murphy's Law completely and totally correct, creating a miniature black hole in the middle of the classroom.

"_I'm sorry sir, but my team-mate's dark bit-beast opened up a black hole to a different dimension and pulled all of the homework sheets through..."_

Hiro had to admit, once he'd managed to rescue what was left of his paperwork, that it was the best excuse for not doing homework he'd ever heard.

* * *

><p><em>AN - Haha, poor Hiro, he really doesn't know what he's getting himself into, teaching this lot, does he? JuniperGentle does not endorse throwing rubbers at classmates with slingshots, denying the laws of physics, or creating black holes for the sole purpose of destroying homework, as awesome an excuse as that would be for not handing it in. _

*Kepler's First Law of Planetary Motion states that "The orbit of every planet is an ellipsis with the Sun at one of the two foci." Look it up for more details, but basically if we had a triangular orbit we'd be pretty stuffed. And, before anyone points it out, it wouldn't really be an orbit.


End file.
